Timberline Lodge in Mount Hood
National Forest - Oregon

Timberline Lodge is the
showplace for Works Progress Administration projects in
Oregon. Its construction was financed with nearly a million
dollars from the WPA and additional funding from the Federal
Art Project for furnishings and art. With WPA funds
available in December 1935, Gilbert Stanley Underwood was
selected as consulting architect. Underwood had already
designed lodges in several national parks, including Bryce
Canyon and Yosemite. Timberline was designed in a similar
rustic style to the national park lodges, with their
asymmetrical design, the use of native materials, and a
roughness reminiscent of pioneer craftsmanship. Working with
Underwood, Forest Service architects Tim Turner, Linn
Forrest, Howard Gifford, and Dean Wright drew the plans for
Timberline, including sketches for the wrought-iron
detailing and some of the rustic wood furniture.

Decline and recovery of the Timberline Lodge
Lifestyles Northwest published a story about the history of Timberline Lodge
in its February 2005 issue, based heavily on interviews with the family who
have operated the lodge for fifty years. The story noted that in the lodge's
early years, it had had four different operators, none of which was willing
or able to maintain it. By 1955 Timberline Lodge was closed and in
disrepair.

Richard Kohnstamm, the patriarch of the family that currently operates it,
remembered those difficulties as being due to financing problems arising
from the fact that the government owned it. Kohnstamm decided to maintain
the place as if he owned it himself; he lost money during his first five
years of operation, but his timing turned out to be fortuitous, since he
began operating it only a few years before skiing started exploding in
popularity in the late 1950s. That popularity helped the family generate a
profit starting in 1960. Kohnstamm, "The man who saved Timberline", died at
the age of 80 on April 21, 2006. Richard's son Jeff is now the Area Operator
of Timberline Lodge.